


I Don't Think So

by josephina_x



Series: Cotton Candy Bingo 2012 [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: News (post-end of season 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Think So

"Good news, everyone!" said Clark in a Futurama voice, bounding into the mansion library with a newspaper held high above his head.

Lex, the sole 'everyone' occupying said library, looked up.

"...Yes?" he asked the grinning teenager.

" _This_ ," Clark waved at him, "is the _last_ Torch of the school year."

Lex blinked at him.

"We put it out on the last day of school," Clark said. When Lex still didn't get it, he added, "School's out."

"Ah," said Lex, before putting his head back down into his files. Hm, where had he been? The efficiency of the pressurized output of the nitrogen tanks had dropped below the 2% margin lately, and--

"Leeeeeex," Clark whined, sitting down on the side of his desk in a way that suggested Clark had all-but-collapsed there in place. "It's summer!"

"Only for you, Clark, only for you."

Clark sighed, then got up, slouched his way over to the couches, and fell onto one of _them_ with a tired sigh.

Lex stifled a smile.

"Sooo booooooored..." Clark moaned from his position sprawled out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.

Lex's lips twitched upwards at the edges before he was able to clear that little bit of unprofessional expression from his face.

Clark kept making random comments to the effect of, 'Lex, why won't you get up and play with me?!' every half-minute or so, until he got a reply of:

"Clark, what's wrong?"

Lex glanced up and saw his father -- no longer blind, or pretending such, whichever -- not-quite-looming over Clark from the side of the couch.

...Not _quite_ looming, because 'looming' required actually trying to come across as physically intimidating, and Lionel was looking far too openly concerned for that.

"Clark's bored," Lex put out there, and then had two pairs of eyes focused on him as he realized that, ah, yes, he had actually said that out loud. To his father.

He couldn't even claim that he'd accidentally blurted it out. He was calling temporary insanity on this one.

"Lex didn't even get my pun earlier," Clark pouted up at Lionel.

...Lex practiced self-control and did not faceplant into his desk surface.

Because, really, his life had gotten weird enough as it was when Martha had divorced Jonathan and remarried to his father, but with Clark finally tossed into the family dynamics mix...?

"Oh, and I think we should tell him," Clark added, blithely forging ahead, "It's not fair that he's the only one who doesn't know now."

...What?

It was official: Clark was trying to distract him.

"Ah, Clark..." Lionel said, sounding almost nervous as he attempted to... dissuade him?

Lex slowly raised his head. ...His father was in on this?

Clark sat up on the couch, gave Lionel a defiant look, then turned to Lex, crossed his arms and said, "I'm an alien."

Lex blinked at him.

"Okay..." Lex said.

There was a long pause.

"Um, do you have any questions or anything?" Clark asked, shifting in place.

"No, not really," said Lex.

Clark blinked at him.

"Can I get back to work now?" Lex asked, pointing at the folders strewn across his desk.

Clark blinked at him again.

 _All right, then._ Lex put his head down and got back to work.

"--Oh my god, you totally don't believe me!" Clark exclaimed, sounding almost outraged.

Lex stifled a sigh and slowly brought his head back up.

"Clark..." Lionel said, looking away and pinching the bridge of his nose. Lex caught the tail end of Clark looking at Lionel and gesturing between him and his firstborn son (Lex) in what was obviously a 'tell him and back me up here!' gesture.

"Oh, c'mon!" Clark said. "I'm the one who told him; mom's not gonna kill _you_."

Lex looked at Clark. He looked at Lionel.

He comtemplated the notion that this was some sort of practical joke that his father was in on.

...Actually, no, he didn't really, because his father was not one for 'practical jokes'.

"I don't suppose you have any proof that you're an alien..." Lex said slowly, wondering if Clark was just joking around to get his attention, or if he really needed professional help of some sort.

Clark stared at hm. He opened his mouth. He closed it again.

"Wow," Clark finally said, sitting back on the couch. "You... you really don't..."

Then he looked a little exasperated and threw his hands up. "This is so not fair!" he complained.

Lex propped his head up on a fist and listened to Clark rant about how "I can't believe-- I mean-- How does this even--" Clark paused and huffed out an angry breath. "Seriously? I've been worrying for ages about you finding out, because you're always poking around abut this stuff all the time, and thnen how you'll be all 'I hate aliens' or mad about me having to lie about it or something, and instead you're all 'I don't believe you'?! _Really?_ "

Fine. Lex decided to play along. "Do you think I'm a racist?"

Clark snapped out of his rant and gave him a blank deer-in-the-headlights look. "What?"

"Do you think I'm a racist?" At Clark's uncertain look, Lex sighed and elaborated. "Racism is, at the core of it, making disturbing or hateful judgments about someone due to their genetics. Do you think I'm a racist?"

"...No."

"Then I see no reason why I should hate you if your biological parentage didn't originate from this planet, for whatever reason," Lex said, with a mental eyeroll, before turning his head back down to his deskwork.

He'd only just started getting back into what he was reading when he was interrupted by "...But you're really not angry about the car crash or anything?"

Lex paused, hand full of pen hovering midair about the sheet. All right. That deserved a response.

"Did I hit you?"

"Clark--" he heard Lionel hiss.

"--Yes."

Lex blinked. He slowly looked up.

"Yes. You did. Hit me. --With your car, I mean."

Clark looked a bit belligerent about it, but he also looked extremely worried at what Lex's response might be.

There was a long pause.

"...Are you mad?" Clark asked finally.

Lex closed his eyes in pain for a moment, then said, carefully, "Why would I be mad that you're not dead?"

He opened his eyes to a confused-looking Clark, and an irritated-looking Lionel.

"...Oh," Clark said quietly.

Lex put his head down again.

"Um," said Clark. "Do you believe me?"

"Of course I do," Lex said smoothly, because really, he'd been fairly sure about the car crash for awhile now.

There was the small problem of those cracked ribs awhile back, though. Was Clark on-again-off-again vulnerable? That would be... inconvenient.

"Oh, good--!" Clark let out in a rush, before Lex nearly heard his shoulders slump from halfway across the room. "You weren't talking about the alien thing, were you," he said darkly.

Lex sighed and lay his head down in his arms on top of his desk. He gave up. He just wasn't going to be allowed to get any more work done today, was he?

"I don't suppose you've got your spaceship around to show me," Lex said, muffled through his arms. "I bet that'd convince me."

"Er, well..." Clark began, sounding embarrassed.

Lex quietly sighed to himself.

"...Lionel's kind of got it right now, and I'm not sure where he put it--" There was a pause where Lex could almost hear the sound of Lionel's disapproving glare filling the space. "Yeah, and uh, it's kind of dangerous and you probably shouldn't go near it anyway, because my bio-dad sucks."

Lex slowly rotated his head up so he could see Clark over his arms. "...Your bio-dad is in the ship?" he asked, not really sure how else Clark's statement could be construed.

"Uh, yeah," Clark sighed, sounding annoyed. "Sort of. I mean, his brain is. Kind of. And he's _really_ mean." Clark shifted in his seat on the couch. "He, uh, he doesn't really seem to like me, and he likes humans even less, so... yeah. Not a good idea."

Lex blinked at him.

"...And my father knows this," he said evenly, feeling a great deal of unease. Because the idea of (evil?) alien tech in hs father's hands was disconcerting enough, but him knowing Clark was the alien owner of the thing was something Lex liked the idea of even less.

"Oh -- yeah, no," Clark said, waving him off. "He's not gonna do anything horrible with it. Or to me. Mom'd get angry. ...And those Veritas guys would too, I guess," Clark ended like it was an afterthought.

Lex blinked at him again. He glanced over at his father, who looked like he either wanted to shoot someone, or go crawl into a dark hole somewhere and die of embarrassment... possibly both, in that order.

He looked back at Clark and said, "In lieu of showing me your spaceship, is there any other alien sort of thing that you could show me instead?"

"Um," said Clark, thinking. Then he cocked his head to the side, glanced over his shoulder, and got a smile. "Yeah, sure!" he said, and suddenly he was gone from the couch.

 _Gone_ gone, as in not-there-just- _vanished_ **gone** , and the far door to the library slammed open out of nowhere, then slowly started to drift closed again.

Lex blinked. He blinked again and glanced around, then looked over at his father, confused as hell.

And suddenly there was a huge wind and papers were flying everywhere.

"Cookie?" said Clark, holding a plate of cookies out to him.

Lex glanced down at his now-paperless desk, then up at the cookies that looked to be right out of the oven.

He looked up at Clark.

"Oh, uh, oops...?" Clark said, looking around and realizing that he'd messed up all of Lex's work, blowing into the room like that.

And then Lex watched as Clark set the plate down on top of his desk and bent over and started blurring about, only about half-visible as he moved around snatching all Lex's papers up off of the floor.

Lex reached forward, selected a cookie from the plate, and bit into it as he leaned back in his chair and watched Clark finish up.

He looked up at an abashed-looking Clark, who stood back up and thrust a messy stack of completely-disorganized papers towards him, two-handed. He saw Lionel slowly facepalm out of the corner of his eye.

Lex chewed his cookie with no small amusement and thought, _I have an alien step-brother who likes to give me cookies, messes up my paperwork by accident, and is perfectly happy to use his super-speed to play amateur office assistant cleaning up his own whirlwind messes. This is my life._

He held out a hand for the stack of papers. Clark gave them to him.


End file.
